Allie Compton (Photo via Facebook).

Everyone knows that media is not the most stable industry and that it’s hard to find an affordable apartment in New York. But surely somebody who is gainfully employed at a media organization with a recognizable name would not be denied an apartment just because the whole industry is shaky, right?

Wrong.

“Last week, I was denied an apartment because I have a full-time job in the media industry,” AOL.com frontpage editor Allie Compton wrote on HuffPost earlier this week.

Ms. Compton responded to a "For rent by owner" listing on Craigslist and saw one of those too-good-to-be true Brooklyn apartments. She showed up with all her financial information, W-2s, proof of employment in hand. Unfortunately, the proof of employment proved that she worked in media.

The owner of the apartment had some personal experience with the capricious world—both of her children had worked in the news industry at some point, and both of her children had been laid off from their news industry jobs, Ms. Compton recalled. After the prospective landlady's daughter took a Newsweek buyout and her son’s entire department at The New York Times was eliminated, the sensible children changed their career paths to something more stable. (To what, we are not exactly sure, since while media might not be the most reliable place to bet on long-term employment, we don’t know if anything really is. If you do, shoot us an email!)

The owner of the apartment told Ms. Compton that she “'was ‘lucky’ to be at a media outlet that is ‘doing well.'"

But a subsequent email informed Ms. Compton that her application for the apartment had been denied.

"Your job is too shaky,” said the email. "Media is a low-paying industry."

"After I received her email, in which she said my job was 'shaky' and that the media industry was low-paying, which was more of a fact than a reason, I cried,” Ms. Compton told The Observer. “I guess it hit me in a sore spot. All day long you read story after story about the ever-changing media landscape, the uncertainty of online publishing, and so on.”

But in the end, all worked out. Ms. Compton found a different, better apartment for the same price. And it was a learning experience!

“Needless to say, it came as a real shock, and made me think hard about how others view what I do for a living,” Ms. Compton said. “But never did I think it would be to my disadvantage to have a full-time job at a time like this.”

The most popular articles on Huffington Post

*Slow clap* Congratulations, Arianna. We see that you've beat the dreaded "Original Holiday Content" beast that has driven down traffic at so many other Internet hubs. And you were so clever about it, too! Why make one post merely listing Walmart's schedule today, when you can create a sort of listicle-generator that randomizes and promotes every pairing of store hours possible?

Here's how the link-bait portal just found a new way to game the system.

On December 5, HuffPost Home put up a piece called Holiday Store Hours 2012: Walmart, Target, Costco And Other Major Retailers (PHOTOS). Since this was on the "Home" section, no one saw it. (Check out the number of tweets, emails and Facebook shares it received.)

HOWEVER, someone must have noticed the clever S.E.O. from the post, which put it on the top of the list when you Google "Most Popular Holiday Store Hours."

Then the program began to self-replicate: On the 22nd, HuffPost Home basically rebooted the same article, calling it "Christmas Eve Store Hours For Target, Walmart, Costco And Other Major Retailers." That rocketed up to the site's "Most Viewed" page, so the next day, there was a new list: "Christmas Eve Store Hours For Target, Walmart, Costco, Toys R Us."

And in case you still haven't gotten the drift of what's going on, the most popular story on all of Huffington Post this morning is in HuffPost Business, and it's literally just a listing from the 23rd of Walmart's hours on Christmas Eve/Day.

The most popular articles on Huffington Post

Quick, try to guess the content of this very popular article! Give up?

"Walmart will not be open on Christmas Day. Most stores will close at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve, but be sure to check your local listings before heading out to do last-minute Christmas shopping. Walmart stores will reopen on December 26."

Whoever came up with this formula, give the (wo)man a bonus!

Guys, you good?

Hey, New York Post, how are you doing? Everything going okay? You feeling alright? No, no ... we're just calling to check in. Your friends are, well, we're a little worried about you the last couple days. Do you need to talk to someone?

God doesn't hate you, Post. I know it can sometimes feel that way, but that's just it: they are feelings. We aren't out to delegitimize some very real things you are going through, but let us assure you that this is not the reality of the situation, which is that there is no God.

Yes, we know that you seemed to be in a better mood yesterday than you were the night before. But still ... we have the number here for a really great therapist who helped out a friend of ours, and we'd really like it if you'd just give him a call.

Just do it for us, okay?

Robin Givhan (Getty Images)

Newsweek/The Daily Beast's fashion critic, Robin Givhan, has published an essay today pleading for an end to the discussion of Michelle Obama's clothing--or, at least, "breathless, fanzine-style chronicling of her attire."

"[T]he flood of Joan Rivers-style verbiage about her day-to-day wardrobe has overwhelmed those nuanced conversations" about Ms. Obama's role as a fashion industry ambassador and the degree to which she could occupy both public and private lives.

The diatribe, consistent with Ms. Givhan's longstanding position on assessing clothes through a political lens (she won a Pulitzer for similar work at the Washington Post, and wrote a book on Ms. Obama's first year as First Lady), shares the page with a very apt example of the phenomenon Ms. Givhan decries. Just above the pullquote "Every garment is not symbolic. Every dress is not fraught with meaning" resides a link to the "Michelle Obama Lookbook," a 91-page slideshow of garments either devoid or possessed of meaning.

Either way, they're mesmerizing to click through.

Tina Brown (Photo: BeastTV)

Newsbeast editor in chief Tina Brown seems to have developed a redemptive streak, at least when it comes to the bad boys and girls of the media world. Her website has recently published several pieces by otherwise disgraced journalists.

On Friday, Ms. Brown brought in Mike Daisey to pen a piece on the first anniversary of the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs. You may remember Mr. Daisey as the man who forced the public radio show This American Life to air an extensive mea culpa after he adapted his one-man show about the brutal conditions at Chinese factories that make Apple products for its broadcast, and it was later found to contain, as the subsequent retraction put it, “numerous fabrications.” Though Mr. Daisey included untruths in his story and, in the words of the radio show's team, “misled This American Life during the fact-checking process,” The Daily Beast apparently had no problem giving him over 1,000 words and two accompanying four-minute “BeastTV” videos, in which he “reflects on the last year” in which he “fell from grace” and acknowledges that mistakes were made, but nonetheless credits himself with sparking a wider discussion of Apple’s labor practices.

Mr. Daisey isn’t the only fabulist who has contributed to The Daily Beast in the past few months. In late July, the site brought in disgraced former Timesman Jayson Blair to weigh in after The New Yorker staff writer Jonah Lehrer was busted for making up Bob Dylan quotes in his best-selling pop science book, Imagine: How Creativity Works.

“Nine years ago, I was Jonah Lehrer,” Mr. Blair wrote. That sentence may be the most accurate thing Mr. Blair’s ever written, and it’s why he’s blacklisted throughout the journalism word, except apparently at the Beast, where it increasingly looks like Ms. Brown is running some sort of media rehab facility.

Indeed, just one day before Mr. Blair’s piece ran, Joan Juliet Buck took to the Beast to tell “her side of the story” about a widely reviled puff piece profiling the wife of brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad that she wrote for Vogue in February 2011. Ms. Buck’s story praised Mrs. Assad as “wildly democratic” and “glamorous, young and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.” The story provoked instantaneous ridicule and was eventually scrubbed from Vogue’s website.

The Daily Beast didn’t include an explanation for why it allowed Ms. Buck to make the improbable claim that she “didn’t know” Mr. Assad was “a murderer” when she started working on her story. However, based on the growing rogue’s gallery accumulating bylines at the site, it seems that ethical questions won’t stop the benevolent editor-confessor from opening her pages to the fallen. But not all good deeds go punished, and giving a new platform to wayward scribes may be a speedy route to page-views—if not to critical acclaim. For example, the piece by Ms. Buck was criticized by many other websites, which of course linked to it in conjunction with their critiques.

We reached out to Ms. Brown to ask about her decision to publish these journalistic miscreants and whether we might expect more blighted Beast bylines in the future. As of this writing, she has yet to respond. We imagine she’s probably busy trying to get in touch with Mr. Lehrer.

Update (10/10/12 11:42 a.m.): An earlier version of this story described This American life as an NPR show. It is distributed to public radio stations by PRI, not NPR. 

A sampling of print sex ads from the pages of the Village Voice circa 2007.

Backpage.com may be gone, but sex ads are here to stay at the alt weeklies formerly owned by Village Voice Media. Over the weekend, Village Voice Media announced it had reshuffled and separated its 13 newspapers from Backpage.com, the classifieds website with the controversial "adult" advertising section. Backpage may not be part of the newly-formed newspaper company, Voice Media Group, but that doesn’t mean its doing away with the highly profitable print sex ads.

“Voice Media Group will continue to support the current adult classifieds in Village Voice,” a spokesperson for Voice Media Group told the Observer this afternoon.

We called back to clarify that print sex ads would remain in the pages of the company's twelve other newspapers. Scott Tobias, the CEO of the new company, confirmed the ads will still run at all of the alt-weeklies in the chain.

"We will not be changing our business model," he said.

Backpage's adult ads have been linked to underage sex trafficking and prostitution leading the site to become the target of lawsuits, legislation and the ire of New York Times columnist Nick Kristof.

Photo credit Twitter

In last week’s installment of her Vice column, “Amphetamine Logic,” Wild child blogger Cat Marnell announced that her time at the hipster web mag was coming to an end.

“I’m writing my last columns,” Cat Marnell explained when we reached her late Friday afternoon .“I almost feel addicted to them, like I could go on forever.”

However, Ms. Marnell, who celebrated her 30^th birthday earlier this week, is ready for her next venture. She said she has become a perfectionist. “I’ve  just got to do it right. When you are writing weird, it’s make it good or go home, you know?” Ms. Marnell noted she scrapped this week’s column because she wasn’t happy with it and missed her deadline.

“I miss my deadlines all the time, and my editor just has to deal with me like Jane did.” Ms. Marnell was the Beauty Editor at xoJane.com until June. Ms. Marnell said she still talks to Jane Pratt all the time, and they plan to have dinner soon.

“I love her, she’s the great love of my life,” Ms. Marnell said of her erstwhile mentor.

But, even though she readily admits she's difficult to deal with, Ms. Marnell said she has enjoyed a great working relationship with Vice EIC Rocco Castoro.

“I mean, I’m a nightmare person to have work for you,” she said. “Half the time they give me edits and I don’t accept them and they are cool with that.”

“Rocco is very empathetic. He’s not happy that I have missed my deadline like multiple times. He’s offered to get me help if it’s a substance issue. He’s manly, I’ve never had a male editor-in-chief.”

To illustrate Mr. Castoro's testosterone quotient, Ms. Marnell told us about how he invited her to an upcoming Vice BBQ by texting her pictures of tomatoes and cucumbers (“so cute!”) to entice her. “He was like, you need to come to my backyard and grill meat.”

Ms. Marnell is preparing her book proposal, which she described as 80 percent done and said she hopes to have finished by next week. She noted that she should have already finished it this summer and said her agent, Byrd Leavell (who reps Tucker Max) of the Waxman Leavell Agency is mad at her for taking so long.

She originally thought her book, which she described as The Devil Wears Prada meets The Basketball Diaries was going to be an addiction memoir. Instead, she now sees it “not as a druggy book, but more about how it worked out.”

“As soon as I said, 'Fuck it,' things started working out for me,” she said. Accordingly, Ms. Marnell said she has adopted a new motto, which she got from a wheelchair advertisement on the side of a bus: “If you can’t stand up, stand out.”

Although known for her drug use, Ms. Marnell believes her writing and progress towards some semblance of sobriety is often overlooked.

“I go to parties, but I don’t really party that much. I’m not, like, Charlie Sheening,” Ms. Marnell said.

As proof of her newfound moderation, Ms. Marnell pointed out she hasn’t smoked PCP in a month.

“I’ve been working really hard at being a better person, but it’s not something I’m writing about.”

We found ourselves on the receiving end of one today, however, that struck a chord of curiosity from one person who sent it on.

The email, which came with the subject line "FW: Eye Candy? Not." extols the educations and qualifications of Fox News's female on-air talent. It begins as follows:

Impressive backgrounds for Fox News' women reporters...

Check out these "Dumb Gals" on FOX News.

For the past 10 years FOX News has had higher ratings and the largest audience numbers (for news and business/political "talk" programs) than all of the other TV and Cable news channels combined, including CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS!

Some folks who are "bitter" about this claim that FOX's higher ratings are only because FOX purposely hires a lot of female "reporters" who do nothing but sit around in short skirts and merely "read everything off of a TelePrompTer."

Bottom line: The next time you hear someone criticizing FOX News for supposedly having a "bunch of dumb gals" doing the news, etc. that are only on the tube to serve as "eye candy" to catch the attention of stupid, right-wing men, etc. well don't be so quick to jump on that left-wing band-wagon!

Still not a believer? Well, scroll down and let the FOX ladies speak for themselves!

It's boilerplate email-forward type stuff, but it then goes on to briefly list the names and credentials (with photos) of "Fox News' women reporters."

We received the email by way of someone fairly close with Fox News, who's already received it multiple times from people having nothing to do with the network: In other words, it's making the rounds, whatever those rounds are, and it's going some degree of old-school viral.

But they correctly point out some omissions from the email: Lauren Green, an African-American woman who's worked as Fox News's on-air religion correspondent; Santita Jackson, one of the few African-American women working as on-air talent at Fox News (who also happens to be Rev. Jesse Jackson's daughter); Jemhu Green, also an African-American woman working at Fox News (who once called Tucker Carlson a "bow-tied white boy"); and Sally Kohn, an openly gay former community organizer whose partner was once the executive director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association.

This isn't the first place the women of Fox News have been quite literally "whitewashed" by their fans. Even the "Girls of Fox News and Fox Business" fansite—yes, it exists—omits most of the African-American Fox News contributors.

A screengrab of part of the email is at the end of this post. We're curious: Have you seen it? Who started this email? What prompted it? And why, with such careful diligence put toward comprehensively listing these women, were the omissions made? If you know anything about it, we'd love to hear it.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

A few minutes ago, the building was struck by lightning...

...At least according to a bunch of people who saw it and Tweeted about it (and also, some folks in the Times building):

Elsewhere in odd forces of nature commenting on the new business leader of the New York Times, Michael Wolff weighed in with his take for The Guardian, best summed up by the last line of the piece:

So, Mark … lunch?

There were also some well-considered moments of thought hidden throughout Wolff's take. For example, he pointed out the fact that Sulzberger is still the "top operating executive" at the paper, even if Thompson has it in his title:

The peculiar compromise, leaving Sulzberger in place with full executive authority, but not giving him the CEO title, has meant: a) no reputable No 1 would take this job knowing they were really No 2; b) that it would be better for Sulzberger if that person who did ultimately take the job was unqualified for it; and c) that Sulzberger still has needed to find someone for the job who was not a joke, or nonentity – someone with some sort of stature (even imported).

Edmund Lee of Bloomberg Businessweek also noted of the pick:

The end result is the CEO has less power than the chairman, said Alex Jones, author of "The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times."

"The position of CEO is a little bit deceptive at the Times because the operational head of the company is the chairman, and that’s Arthur Sulzberger," Jones said in an interview. "The CEO’s job will be whatever Arthur decides it should be."

Lee's report also observed that Thompson's experience fending off Rupert Murdoch's British news properties may have also earned him points with the Sulzberger family.

As for points lost, Roland Li at the International Business Times weighed in, having already talked to some Times employees regarding the pick. One was not exactly psyched:

"He's done a decent job with the BBC's site, but nothing that any other adequate media executive wouldn't do, and certainly nothing exceptional," said a Times staffer. "The newsroom is skeptical because he is known less as a media innovator than a hatchet man for a legacy brand, and the BBC's business model is nothing like ours."

Skeptical of a hatchet man? You don't say.

Surely the world will get to know Thompson more by the way his presence is (or isn't) felt by newsroom insiders, but until then, we'll just have to go with media-on-media reactions to the pick, or by how he's being received by the forces of nature and/or gods of hellfire, which may or may not result in that wonderful Renzo Piano building being felled by a freak solar flare hail storm of rainy inferno in the coming days. For what it's worth, however, since we started writing this post, the sun has come out.

Take it to mean nothing. Or everything.

fkamer@observer.com  | @weareyourfek 

'Fifty Shades of Grey' by E. L. James (Getty Images)

And for today's yikes news ... E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey has surpassed Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code series to become the best-selling book of all time this week in Britain.

According to reports, 5.3 million copies of Fifty Shades have been sold in the U.K. in either print or e-book form since its release. The book's sequels (oh yeah, did you forget that there were sequels to the Twilight-based erotica?), Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, have sold 3.6 million and 3.2 million respectively.

For the past 16 weeks, Fifty Shades of Grey has remained at the top of best-seller lists, both at home and abroad. It has been credited for the upswing in everything from book sales to condoms to vagina ball explosions. Hell, you'd think the books' original series, Twilight, would have been credited for the rise in commerce, but we guess the old adage is true: sex sells. Even better than vampires, apparently.